New Queens Laying Well

[Wood~Ant]

I recently collected some newly mated Lasius niger queens from around my garden. I collected 10 in total, of which I now have 5 remaining.

Every one of these queens now has a batch of eggs numbering between 12 to 25. I will continue to monitor their progress and that of their brood, as I expect them to have workers by mid September or there abouts

[Formicalondon]

My 3 L. niger queens are the same, had one that wasn’t producing at first, but she has caught up; but one of them has a hell of allot. Unfortunately my M rubra are not so good, I had 7 in total, now I'm down to 3 and no eggs. They're in the exactly same conditions as the L. niger too.

[ross]

yes, they are weird are those M rubra, I caught a load last year and they all seemed to just die

[Jenny]

We had a rubra colony from the wild the other year. It didn't do very well once in captivity, and we eventually lost the lot

We had a smaller colony, and they faired much better so you can never tell

[anttastic]

I think my rubra colony is dead , as theres no activity. And they didn't escape.

[andy]

Think one of my queens is laying (not seen the second one in the jar at all since I put her in there)!!

I checked on the queen in antworld and there are tiny white objects (I'm assuming they are eggs) - but they seem small and there aren't many! Let's hope!

I go away tomorrow for 10 days..... hope all will be ok (at least she will be left alone)!